1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a system and method for managing a database. More particularly, it relates to managing access to data items through use of a plurality of authentication schemes.
2. Background Art
Content Manager is a relational database, such as the IBM DB2 database manager, client/server application. To use database manager authentication, system administrators are faced with the problem of managing users at the operating system level. In a large content manager installation, this could mean managing up to 100,000 users, a task that can be tedious and time-consuming.
Given this environment, one requirement is to allow authentication directly by content manager instead of defining users to the operating system. This is a preferred environment when content manager users do not need access to any other resources of the system.
When users do need access to other resources on the system running the content manager server, customers sometimes prefer a central repository for managing user IDs and passwords. This is most often considered to be a requirement for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) support, but has also included the need to use some other authentication mechanism.
It is an object of the invention to provide an improved system and method for authenticating system users.